


Nesting

by nice_girls_play



Series: Other 'Verses, Other Rimmers [2]
Category: Red Dwarf
Genre: F/F, F/M, Genderswap, Multiverse, Pre-Series, Queer Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2018-01-02 14:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1057688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nice_girls_play/pseuds/nice_girls_play
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arlene Rimmer is a throw back and a nuisance and, when it comes to Dave Lister,  the wettest of mother hens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nesting

"A little early for Z-shift, isn't it, Rimmer?" 

Kristine Kochanski didn't need to look up from her station to know who it was -- Arlene Rimmer was the only one out of more than a thousand crewmen who turned up on shift in a pencil skirt and high heels; presumably clinging to some backward Ionian sense of femininity gleaned from a misspelled copy of Emily Post a hundred years back. Looking up from the console, she was forced to concede the effect wasn't wholly unflattering, just impractical, and still another reminder of the vicious caricature of female ineptitude in the so-called 'man-space' of ship life Rimmer seemed doomed to live up to. 

The taller woman stood at attention -- a beige sentinel in the otherwise empty drive room -- her auburn hair pulled back into the tightest bun Kris had ever seen outside of librarians and maiden aunts. Her hazel eyes glittered, lips pursed sternly and twitching slightly in time with her right wrist. No, not unflattering at all. Kris let herself look a bit longer, unabashed. Quite a few of the crew looked at Arlene -- she was quite easy to look at, before she started talking. 

"I'd like a word, ma'am."

"Okay."

"Permisson to speak *freely*, ma'am."

As though there was a force short of a solar flare delivering a promotion and a gold swimming certificate that could stop her. "Holly? Do you mind taking over the navigation for a bit?"

"I'll guide the old girl for a bit, Kris," the blonde, lipsticked interface had the temerity to wink before letting the screen go black. 

"We're all alone. Speak your mind."

"You hurt his feelings," she said, the pioneer moon twang breaking through the usual affected plummy tones.

Not, 'you hurt his feelings, Miss Kochanski.' The dropped formality (along with the lack of a salute -- absurd though it usually was) was the first kick in the gut; the complete lack of respect, the lack of acknowledgement for her position and all she'd worked for to get it. 

The mention of Dave -- well, that hit her a second later. 

"With all due respect, Arlene, it's really not your business." 

She hadn't seen Dave since The Break-up (what she'd privately named 'The Cock-up'), since her attempt to let him down gently. She had tried to explain it in the best terms possible: she owed Tina another chance. They had two years together, on and off ship. There was history there and responsibility and she and Dave had had a lot of fun but, in the end, her heart was somewhere else. She had nested in with Tina, made her home there, and no matter what pain and differences arose afterward, that was where she belonged. 

Every word had been razor sharp, no matter how much she'd tried to dull it with clasped hands and gentle tones. Every syllable had shown in his face like a punch in the stomach, turning dark eyes misty and making her feel every bit the evil harridan out kicking puppies for fun and games. And now, here was Rimmer, to do it all over again. 

"He's my technician. You're messing with my technician... who is also my bunkmate... who is also vile and disgusting and eats his own toenail clippings and why you'd want to trifle with his affections is frankly beyond me but *stop it*."

"I have stopped it. Or didn't he tell you?"

The lips sharpened into a firm line. "He didn't have to tell me anything. His performance is suffering." 

His performance. His *performance* at cleaning the coagulated gunk out of the vending machine nozzles had *suffered*. The cup of tea she had perched on the console suddenly looked a lot less appetizing.

"Give him the night off. Give him the *week* off. Surely, there's a Space Corps directive that allows him to have time off, isn't there?" Rimmer had to know a few, she reasoned. She quoted them often enough.

"Space Corps directive 570306-stroke-D," she rattled off, plainly unaware of the attached description 'No officer with chemically-treated hair shall be allotted more than the requisite amount of pomade.' "I've given him all the time off I can within the bounds of protocol. I can't perform all of the shift's duties on my own." 

"Get one of the skutters to help you."

"He needs--"

"I can't give him what he needs!" the pitch in her voice made her frown. Well, now. She hadn't realized her voice could reach B major outside of a women's chorus. 

Rimmer, for her part, seemed unaffected. The taller woman's nostrils flared in a manner Kris could only call 'superior.' It made her fingers flex against the back of the chair -- not quite a fist, not quite strong enough grip to tear the chair from its moorings and throw it.

"Well, with all due respect, Miss Kochanski, that much is obvious."

"What are you? His mother?" she asked. She certainly wasn't his friend, if the escalating nastiness of some of their mutual pranks was to be believed. Not his girlfriend, either -- if the unfortunate liaison with John McGruder was to be believed. Though Kris still wasn't completely clear on how consensual that encounter had been on either side -- John with a head injury and Rimmer with her... Rimmeresque disinterest in anything that didn't relate to fixing machines and social climbing. She did remember hearing that Dave had threatened to trip John out of the nearest air lock if he so much as looked at Arlene again, but her own precise investment in Dave's wellbeing was a little more nebulous.

"No, I'm just his supervisor! And his bunkmate! And the one who gets to listen to his awful guitar and his dreadful singing and his nauseating poetry about Love Gone Horribly, Horribly Wrong all hours of the day when you and every one else get to hide in your rooms! I'm the one who has to tidy up his clothes and curry containers and mountains and mountains of used tissues when I could be studying for my exams! Do you have any idea what that's like?!"

Okay. So, not nebulous at all. Maybe. Kris was quite sure no one was *making* Arlene do any of those things, least of all Dave Lister, who resisted servile behavior from non-sentient service droids let alone people. In her eternally backwards way, she probably enjoyed it. What she plainly didn't enjoy was seeing Dave in pain, and that was something they could agree on. 

"Talk to him."

"About what?" Kris felt her throat constrict at the brief, lost look in her eyes.

"Anything. I don't know." Dave was a good listener. That was one thing she'd taken away from the Lost Weekend spent in his bunk, eating curry and onion corn flakes and watching old movies. He would get lost in whatever she'd wanted to discuss -- good, bad, unnerving, grotesque, infuriating or sublime -- giving his calm and sense of fun in return. For anyone else, it might have been the foundation for something more. 

But not for her.

"Just stay away from him."

"All right," she said, but Rimmer had already turned on her heel and was stalking away, large stick firmly in place. 

That final, fierce look in hazel eyes would stay with Kochanski for the rest of her life (three weeks, five days, and seventy-five cups of slightly-off tea later).

\--

"Oh no. No, no, NO, what is that?!"

Arlene had made short work of the corridors, ignoring the turned heel she received on the corrugated staircase along with the leers of McGruder and several other crewmen, hoping to make it back to the quarters before Lister returned. 

Her hopes made a "whooshing" sound as they disappeared into the ether. The gerbil-faced nip was already back in their quarters and stretched out on *her* bunk when she arrived, a coil of still radioactive fury warm in her belly and looking for a convenient outlet to be unleashed. 

Lister, smiling and stroking something dark and covered with fur, was as chirpily oblivious as ever. 

"Oi, smeghead. You didn't meet me on Titan."

Her brain circled for a moment, finally coughing up the coordinates of the rendezvous point she was supposed to meet him at and had ignored in favor of nipping the Kochanski situation in the bud. She took a deep breath in through her nose, hitting the door lock behind her.

"I was under the impression that a grown man didn't need a handler to pick him up at a spaceport and hold his hand all the way back to the Big Bad Spaceship and I'll ask you again: What. Is. That?"

"She."

"What?"

"She's a she," he rolled up to sit on the edge of the bunk, agile as an overturned tortoise. "And she's a cat."

"I can see that, thank you very much indeedy. What is she doing here?"

"Purring, I think," a square-palmed, spatulate hand stroked over the glowering cat's head, stroking the already flattened ears back even further. "Only had dogs before. Here, pet her."

"No, no no. You can not do this to me, Lister."

"Are you allergic?" His arms retracted slightly, bringing the furry monstrosity back to burrow in his own, custard-stained shirt front. 

"Of course not." Well, she might have been. The swab test had been ages ago and her parents had never tested the results by bringing an actual animal into the house. Dungo had been enough, according to Father.

"Well, we're fine then."

"We are NOT fine then, Lister. You can't keep a cat on board this ship! There are rules." The toe of her shoe collided with an empty curry tin. She reached down to pick it up, only to recoil in horror as she realized it was being used as a make-shift litter box. 

He shrugged and moved to a standing position, maddening nonchalance in tact. "Rules were made to be broken, Rimmer."

"No, you see, that's where you're wrong, Lister. They can't be! In fact, I'm pretty sure they were put in place very specifically NOT to be broken!"

Mid-tirade, she found herself with two arms full of a very fidgety black fur. A pair of gold-grey eyes peered up from her chest, blinking slowly. Her left arm shifted instinctively to clutch at the cat's dangling lower legs, pulling it more firmly against her sternum and wincing as a set of ten, rather sharp claws found purchase in her uniform shirt. 

"Look at that. She likes you," Lister smiled, dark eyes crinkling at the edges, murky with something apart from senseless grief for the first time in weeks. 

Arlene returned her gaze to the tiny face attempting to tuck itself under her chin. Of its own accord, the hand that wasn't supporting the cat's weight came up to stroke under the dark chin. She could feel the corners of her lips perk up as a tiny vibration rumbled against her fingers. 

She registered a flash somewhere in her peripheral vision.

"Great shot! That's one more for the dart board. 'Looks like you made a friend, Rimmer."

And that, she thought, newly furious, brought the roster to a grand total of 'one.' Or half-one, considering the cat couldn't converse with her, help her with her AstroNav flash cards, or any of the things she'd observed that friends might be useful for. Still, the purring was nice. 

Maybe this one would at least keep herself clean.

"Find a place to store her food, find a place to store *her*, and, for the last time, pick up this smegging mess. I am not living in a place where she has a million little hiding holes to bury her 'secrets.'"

"Sure thing," he said, stroking the cat's ears. 

"I mean it, Lister. I'm not picking up after you anymore."

"I understand, Rimmer," his hands were gentle as he removed the cat from her hold, cradling the now contented animal against his shoulder. He was still smiling -- the smile that indicated he found her amusing rather than hilariously archetypal, outdated, uptight, a drag; absent of plotting or condescension.

Later, Arlene would puzzle over the warmth that stayed over her heart long after the cat had found another place to rest.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a discussion on the Red Dwarf Slash community about what a female Rimmer would be like. This was what my brain coughed up and wouldn't leave me alone until I set her loose. The Kochanski I went with here is something closer to the dimensional alternate we saw in series 7 and 8, while Holly is Hattie's version. Also, I genderswapped Tim from catering. Because why not?


End file.
